Final Fantasy 15 ships 5 million during its first day on sale

Square Enix has announced via a Japanese press release that Final Fantasy 15 has physically shipped and digitally sold five million copies worldwide in its first 24 hours on sale.

Final Fantasy 15 is off to a great start

The figure includes digital sales of the JRPG, with Square going on to confirm the the game also broke day-one digital sales for a videogame in its native Japan. If that wasn’t enough, Final Fantasy 15 also set a new record for release date shipment and download records for Asian regions outside of Japan.

Note that the term shipped was used, meaning this represents the number of copies shipped to retailers, not sold to consumers. Nonetheless, it’s an extremely promising start for the game which has taken around 10 years to finally see the light of day, and makes it the fastest-selling Final Fantasy title to date.

Aside from its tumultuous development cycle, which originally started on the PS3 under the title of Final Fantasy Versus XIII, the game is also the first Final Fantasy title to receive a simultaneous worldwide release. Typically, regions outside of Japan have had to wait months for a localised version.

Final Fantasy 15’s combat employs a more action-based system that has more in common with Kingdom Hearts than the classic Final Fantasy titles, although the return to an open-world setting means players are free to explore and take part in numerous side quests as they see fit. The game entered production around 2012, when Square Enix decided to scrap the Versus XIII concept and revamp it for modern consoles.